Miles to Go Before I Sleep
by Sekah
Summary: The life of Kurama is never laid out plainly by the kitsune who lived it. Pairings: Youko Kurama/Kuronue and Yomi/Kurama.
1. Pomegranate Morning

**Author's Note:** This fic will go through Kurama's life, the known, the unknown. The setting of this chapter is in ancient China, during the Han Dynasty. I left plenty of clues for that, but I'll make it explicit in this note. Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong><span>Morning Poem<span>**

_by Mary Oliver_

_.  
><em>

Every morning  
>the world<br>is created.  
>Under the orange<p>

sticks of the sun  
>the heaped<br>ashes of the night  
>turn into leaves again<p>

and fasten themselves to the high branches -  
>and the ponds appear<br>like black cloth  
>on which are painted islands<p>

of summer lilies.  
>If it is your nature<br>to be happy  
>you will swim away along the soft trails<p>

for hours, your imagination  
>alighting everywhere.<br>And if your spirit  
>carries within it<p>

the thorn  
>that is heavier than lead -<br>if it's all you can do  
>to keep on trudging -<p>

there is still  
>somewhere deep within you<br>a beast shouting that the earth  
>is exactly what it wanted -<p>

each pond with its blazing lilies  
>is a prayer heard and answered<br>lavishly,  
>every morning,<p>

whether or not  
>you have ever dared to be happy,<br>whether or not  
>you have ever dared to pray.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Pomegranate Morning<strong>

.

They were intertwined, like kits exhausted from strenuous play, lying on a mat of tough, springy grass overgrown from the ki rolling off of Kurama's skin. Kuronue fingered a green blade, running it between his claws to slice it, his seed from their latest fuck cooling on his thighs. Sickles glinted in the sunlight a safe distance away, though this grove was full of Kurama's traps and spies. Kuronue could be armed again in moments.

Youko flicked his eyelid open indolently at the minuscule tremor in his power, and healed the grass blade with a few moments' concentration. He reached up to a spindly branch twining down to him and cupped the ripe pomegranate it deposited in his hand.

"The humans of this land," Kuronue asked, curious, rolling over and stretching like a cat, "what are they called?"

"The Han," Youko hummed, "ruled by a dynastic Emperor." His claws ran gently over the indent of Kuronue's spine, marveling. "They think this," he said, holding up the full red pomegranate for inspection, "grants you fertility."

Youko's tail curved to stroke over Kuronue's hip, which glistened with languid sweat. His claws dug violently into the rind of the fruit, ripping it in half with a single motion. Several of the bittersweet, edible seed casings popped, and juice flowed down over the jagged edges of the fruit's skin to pool between the ridges of his chest. Youko had eaten several already, and his fingers, claws, palms, mouth, chin, and neck were all stained a color like blood. Yellow eyes curved when he smiled at Kuronue, who muttered, rolled again, and leaned in, his pale lips mouthing kisses over the spilled juice, one of his wings flexing, crushed beneath him. Youko's legs shivered at the sensation. He moaned deep in his throat and plucked out a single casing, doubling the sugar production and then slipping it between his lips to suck.

Kuronue watched Youko's face turn sensual. Finally, annoyed by the teasing, he clambered onto Youko, crushing their lips together so Kuronue could lap at the treat. Youko let him in, let him steal the seed, delighting in the melding flavors and the slickness of Kuronue's tongue. Having claimed his prize, Kuronue didn't suck, but bit, hissing at the sharp taste.

The grove was a prettier place now than when they'd found it. Flowers who felt their master's pleasure bloomed fuller in joy, their seeds dripping to the ground, going through full life cycles. Seedlings grew tall after the briefest of interludes, an ever-shifting phantasmagoria. A pond beside them, originally drab and grey, was encased in water lilies with wide white flowers and rounded pads. The algae choking the pond's flora, with a twist of Youko Kurama's power, had died down, clearing the water of everything but silt.

Though they had spent the night lovemaking and sleeping in turn, Kurama had never remembered to replace the grass they'd lain on with a softer bed of moss, and now it was too late.

A butterfly mounted a nearby blossom, its white wings, each with a single brown spot like two eyes, flexing daintily open and closed. Youko was distracted by the sight, absentmindedly popping another casing into his mouth, while Kuronue rolled over yet again, restless, and watched the clouds form. Birds chipped and chirruped at the sky, at the bright sunlight of late morning.

Tonight they would ply their trade as bandits. The portal they wanted, which would lead them within scouting distance of the impregnable fortress of Kal Ad'dhun in a southwestern point of the Makai, was only a few dozen jō west.

Youko, finally deciding they'd waited long enough, yawned and slid into the water of the pond, growing soapbark from the seed of it he kept tucked away behind his ear. Kuronue joined him, both blinking at the bright sunlight, Youko tossing Kuronue some aloe and more soapbark. They didn't need to speak, comfortable with one another, bodies warm from the sun and cool from the water.

Youko was done first, shaking himself like a dog and wringing out his tail. Vines swished over his skin, twisted in his hair and over the fur of his ears until the excess water was gone. Youko Kurama stepped into his tunic. He watched Kuronue for a moment, and then began undoing the changes his power had wrought, pulling back the flowers and trees, pomegranates sinking back into the branches, leaving a few overripe fruit to hang, and several rotten fruit that had turned to saplings devolving back, until the rancid mess littering the ground returned. A murder of crows with black wings landed back on their nests, sidling and cackling in annoyance, though hardly daring to challenge the kitsune who had deposed them. The troop of monkeys who had camped here originally was smarter: they wouldn't return until well after the two demons had left.

"I'm in the mood for some meat," Kurama declared, eying the murder. The crows quieted, sensing the sudden sharpening of his interest.

"Leave them," Kuronue replied, bored. "Crows are tough things, scavengers. They taste foul."

Kurama sneered, but finished checking over his kit anyway, knowing Kuronue was right. "I've never liked them. I can't imagine why those Northwestern human tribes worship them."

"They worship death," Kuronue said, shrugging his shoulders. "What creature could be more appropriate?"

Kurama's sneer deepened. Death came, and ate away at joy. Death was in someone else's hands, the Gods', or the Reikai's, or an enemy's. Kurama had no love of death, or of people who had the weakness to seek it. Rather than reply, having finished his silent inventory, he turned to Kuronue and smirked toothily. "Help me erase our tracks?"

Kuronue grinned, cheeky. "At your service," he purred. Hefting his sickles, he did up his belts and re-wrapped his leathers while humming a Persian folk tune, watching the lilies fade and the algae build in the pond with regret.

* * *

><p><strong>Glossary:<strong>

_Jō_ – From the Shakkan-hō, the traditional Japanese unit of measurement. Each jō was about ten feet in length.


	2. Secret and Strange

_**Author's Note:** I am very much enjoying writing this. I hope people enjoy reading it!_

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><p><strong>Traditional Song Sung During Tanabata, the Japanese Star Festival<strong>

The bamboo leaves rustle,  
>shaking away in the eaves.<br>The stars twinkle  
>on the gold and silver grains of sand.<br>The five-colour paper strips  
>I have already written.<br>The stars twinkle,  
>they watch us from heaven.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Secret and Strange<strong>

.

The morning's joviality had faded, frozen into something new, and dangerous. Hopefully, their painstaking job of scouting the perimeter and sizing up the defenses of the underground castle remained unnoticed. Kuronue was out of the reach of sight, sound, and smell, his familiar ki blocked with the expertise of a thief. Still, Kurama was following his movements through the bamboo, obliquely warning him of traps, guards and alarms he passed, making sure he stayed safe. Kuronue radiated confidence, even at this distance: he hardly needed Kurama's protection. A strange thing, Kurama reflected, that such foreign instincts should be aroused in him. Everything he felt for Kuronue, in fact, was foreign. He was not called the whore of the Makai for nothing—lovers and victims abounded—but what he felt for this impetuous, handsome bat demon was not analogous to any part of his life before their partnership. It was more than the respect earned by a worthy comrade, more than the complex painful ecstasy of a good fuck. They'd built intimacy and trust together, and though one of them managed to rend it apart every so often, it always, somehow, rebuilt itself.

Ahead of him, clearly visible from his perch clinging to the tip of a tall bamboo shoot, was the massive, gaping mouth of a stone guardian, arching up as though frozen in the act of eating the earth, rising at least three jō into the air, more than thrice Youko's height. Roughly hewn, with teeth as long and sharp as any sword jutting from its square lips, it had dull eyes carved from flat dead obsidian in need of polishing, watching all that passed by it. The door down into the underground fortress stood guarded by sentinels inside the statue's maw, where a throat would have been, were it alive. It was surrounded on all sides by whispering groves of bamboo, secret and strange, which had soaked up Kurama's ki and helpfully whispered the location of traps and alarms to their new master.

Youko hoped Kuronue would find a better way inside. The stone mouth appeared to be the only entrance or exit, and it reeked of old magic. Youko knew they could get inside without awakening its protections, but getting out and away was another matter. Enchantments like that knew no master, and given a task, would perform it even onto slaughtering its own maker. It could be tricked, but not disabled.

A despotic lord ruled the stronghold of Kal Ad'dhun, a man renowned for his cruelty and avarice. He was paranoid, sadistic, and for the most part, his gold didn't interest Youko. There was one item, however, that had caught the Legendary Bandit's eye: an origin mirror. There were few of those artifacts left on this plane of existence. Powerful receptors and amplifiers for divination, they came from the days before time, when the Gods ruled in a state of constant flux, and the three worlds were shapeless and malformed. An item of that rarity would normally be hard to unload, but a nobleman of a rival house had promised riches beyond imagination for it, a fourth of which had already been delivered into Kurama's hands.

One item, even one that carried such risk, was well worth such a glorious commission.

Youko turned sharply. _Control your scent,_ he signed to Kuronue, who crept up to his perch from between the bamboo's long shadows, a worried look transforming his handsome face.

_No weak points that I could see, _Kuronue signed back. _Only one way in or out._

Kurama frowned, beginning to plan their infiltration. Pure stealth wouldn't achieve this: so few were allowed access to the stronghold that disguises were out of the question. They had no choice, as Youko had already known from previous, long-distance reconnaissance. They'd have to hit both fast and accurate, taking out the guards, slipping through the main entrance, and getting as far in as quickly and quietly as possible. There would be a fight, but hopefully they'd have reached and abandoned the secret chamber containing the mirror and be back through the entrance before the strong opponents were roused. By the time anyone dangerous was chasing them, they'd be well away, disappearing into the night as though all they'd ever been were ghosts.

They'd have to hit it tonight. Every moment spent near this place was dangerous; they could be discovered at any time.

All he signaled to Kuronue was _tonight_, but he was sure his partner understood. It was all in the grin he flashed him.

They settled in, tight with tension and anticipation, to wait.


	3. Unburied

**Author's Note:** The situation I described for homeless children is happening on the streets of Brazil's cities as we speak. Consider googling and finding ways to donate time or money to help end the murder of Brazilian children for profit. Thank you.

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><p><strong><span>Death Alone<span>**

_By Pablo Naruda_

_._

There are lone cemeteries,

tombs full of soundless bones,

the heart threading a tunnel,

a dark, dark tunnel :

like a wreck we die to the very core,

as if drowning at the heart

or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,

clammy slabs for feet,

there is death in the bones,

like a pure sound,

a bark without its dog,

out of certain bells, certain tombs

swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,

coffins under sail

setting out with the pale dead, women in their dead braids,

bakers as white as angels,

thoughtful girls married to notaries,

coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,

the wine-dark river to its source,

with their sails swollen with the sound of death,

filled with the silent noise of death.

Death is drawn to sound

like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,

comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,

comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.

Nevertheless its footsteps sound

and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree.

I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see

but it seems to me that its song has the colour of wet violets,

violets well used to the earth,

since the face of death is green,

and the gaze of death green

with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf

and its grave colour of exasperated winter.

But death goes about the earth also, riding a broom

lapping the ground in search of the dead -

death is in the broom,

it is the tongue of death looking for the dead,

the needle of death looking for the thread.

Death lies in our beds :

in the lazy mattresses, the black blankets,

lives a full stretch and then suddenly blows,

blows sound unknown filling out the sheets

and there are beds sailing into a harbour

where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

* * *

><p>Kurama languished on his back, no part of him taking in the cheerful vine shelving covered in colored bottles of poisons and antidotes, healing potions and serums and who knows what else, or the openings that led to other parts of this hideout, a narrow warren that meandered down between the bracing roots of trees, cupped about brilliant underground gardens, trapped in narrow spaces and hidden around sudden swerves, all crisscrossed with traps. His hands rose constantly to feel the tears streaming down his face, wondering at them, at the awful gaping chasm that had opened in his chest last night, raw and yearning.<p>

In Kurama's memory, a little boy with stubby horns just beginning to twist out from beneath his shock of black hair sneered and taunted the ravens and rich nobility alike, hurling stones at any who caught his eye. Yomi had been a street-urchin, as had Youko Kurama, in those long, lazy days of demonic childhood. For sport, and as a way of controlling a population of abandoned children that were, at the time, considered vermin on the level of the rats and pigeons, gangs of demons roamed the city of Kurama's youth, murdering any wharf rats they could find. Rich shop owners and slighted noblemen offered hefty rewards for every child's body that was brought before them, flat rates per corpse.

Yomi was fearless and foolishly brave to taunt them, even then. Kurama had learned how to shed his true fox form early, and he divided his time between the forests he loved, and the city he exploited. By the tender age of fifty, the half-grown spirit fox and Yomi left their burgeoning gang behind and disappeared into the forests of the world, determined to leave behind hunger, if not savagery; nudity, if not brutality; the hard scrabbling for existence, if not the grasping nature that it had inspired.

Youko's love of decadence came from a very real fear of loss and hunger inside of him. For all his well-known cruelty, the demon fox had often given famished children fruits of his own early design, fruits whose flesh could fill a person up in a few bites, packed with nutrients and designed, in later years (he had never perfected it in his childhood, when such fruits had saved his life), to taste unbelievably delicious, tricking the senses into believing one was eating the raw meat of a human child, or the finest, most succulent sweets of the nobility. Those offerings to starving youths were his only acknowledgement of the travails of his childhood. It wasn't until he met Kuronue–

And there the issue lay. Kuronue.

Kuronue. Laughing in a sun shower, tilting his chin up to feel the rain.

Kuronue. His muscled back twisting beneath Kurama as they fucked, the sweat rolling from his sides, the drawn-out, musical groans.

Kuronue. Impaled on a length of bamboo.

Shouting, Run, run.

Bleeding.

Kuronue. Left unburied, hanging bloody on the spikes.

And the tears welled up and fell anew, reflected in the origin mirror abandoned at the entranceway, as Kurama curled against his arms, his tail wrapping between his legs, his ears flat against his hair.

The smell of Kuronue's life surrounded Kurama in that hideout, that masculine scent of sex and sweat, carrying Kuronue's own pheromones, so Kurama could almost pretend, almost make himself believe–

But Kuronue was dead.


	4. Overstepping Bounds

**Youth**

_BY JAMES WRIGHT_

* * *

><p>Strange bird,<p>

His song remains secret.

He worked too hard to read books.

He never heard how Sherwood Anderson

Got out of it, and fled to Chicago, furious to free himself

From his hatred of factories.

My father toiled fifty years

At Hazel-Atlas Glass,

Caught among girders that smash the kneecaps

Of dumb honyaks.

Did he shudder with hatred in the cold shadow of grease?

Maybe. But my brother and I do know

He came home as quiet as the evening.

He will be getting dark, soon,

And loom through new snow.

I know his ghost will drift home

To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,

Whittling a root.

He will say nothing.

The waters flow past, older, younger

Than he is, or I am.

* * *

><p>Years passed like swimming underwater, drowning. Every day Youko Kurama drowned, and what little had been personable and warm inside him died.<p>

It was only later that he could think about Kuronue's death, beyond those brief, flashing images that tore through Kurama's brain. At length, acquisition of power became his goal, rags stuffed in the cracks of the overflowing cask of his soul, to try to stem the leaks. Though he'd never admit it, this was a tribute to Kuronue's memory. They'd wanted a territory. Youko would have it.

His first recruit to his new thieving band was Yomi, now grown to manhood.

Yomi's adoration of him was a nuisance. He was arrogant, hot-headed. He was also naive enough to believe that things would go on like this forever.

In 902 A.D., as the Gregorian Calendar parsed it, Youko Kurama halted the gang at a taverna in Byzantium. The Byzantine hostess was spiritually aware and still believed in the old gods, and blessing them in the names of her patron goddess, ushered them to the mosaic-lined courtyard where she dined them all for a pittance of silver on her best date wine, cheese-drenched omelettes and a dish of seared fish and spiced red lentils. After that the gang chatted, snacked on olives and figs, and tore hunks of bread to dip in oil or the communal pot of thick navy bean soup and crab meat.

Youko, pleased by his recent heist and relaxed by the warm sun and the good food, bought out the better parts of the hostess's wine cellar for a handsome fee.

The gang left in good cheer, and that night, having crossed a barrier and entered a secure hideout they kept in the area, Youko consented and allowed those not on watch for the night to get drunk, which the gang set about doing with alacrity.

Yomi had spent the day sullen, and drinking only made him more so. The revelry picked up, and several young members began carelessly to rut. Yomi watched them, ever more bitter, swaying subtly as he consumed more and more of the unwatered wine.

His eyes glinting madly with tears, he jumped up, drawing curious gazes, and stumbled to Kurama, who sipped the same small bowl he had taken at the beginning of the night, content with a small buzz in case of attack.

"Yomi, what ails you—" Kurama began, uncomfortable with his companion's tears, and at that moment, Yomi spat in his face.

"I love you," Yomi sobbed, baring his teeth and red-faced from drink. "You whore, you kitsune whore, I love you! I love you more than that dead bitch Kuronue ever could! Yet you'll sleep with anything, anyone, but you've never even taken me to bed! Not once! You pat me on my head and send me to sleep and I won't have it, I won't!"

Silence stretched, all the gang holding their breath.

"You," Kurama said finally, his voice a dangerous hiss as the gang quieted around them, "dare to call me a whore?"

Yomi was belligerently drunk, but he was not so far gone he didn't know, like any rabbit, to cower at the bark of a fox.

Youko stood to his full height, surprised to see he no longer towered over Yomi. The commanding aura he gave off more than made up for it, though.

"Down," Kurama growled.

Yomi trembled, paralyzed with fear, as Youko Kurama wielded a heavy, thornless whip, formed from a flower he pulled from his hair.

Seeing himself disobeyed, Youko Kurama kicked out Yomi's feet and swung him flat with a grip on his arm.

For some time, there was only the snaps and crackles of the fire's embers and the cracks of the whip, along with Yomi's pitiful wails.

When it was done, Yomi curled up far from the fire and bawled his eyes out, breath coming in hitches and sobs.

Youko, his rage cooled, decided a few things in that moment: that Kuronue was thrice the man Yomi was; that he'd have to remake the gang if he wanted to allow Yomi to regain face; that he would never fuck Yomi, if only to prove a point; and that if Yomi continued to overstep his bounds, he'd have him killed.

Yomi, in his immaturity, overstepped again not a decade later.

Youko Kurama made good on his silent promise.


End file.
